


Breathe In, Breathe Out

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fake Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 17:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18529552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Danny mistakenly thinks Colleen is dead. Set post-S2.





	Breathe In, Breathe Out

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt: _Colleen is presumed dead, Ward helps Danny through it (until HEA obviously!) :D_

Ward had nothing against libraries, normally. But the whole point to a library was being able to read the books. This library was associated with a temple in the north of India, and while Danny couldn't read most of the books either, he still seemed to be having a great time poring over crumbling old scrolls. Ward was bored out of his skull. He'd just been considering leaving and going in search of a cafe or teahouse or _something_ when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

"Hey, Ward," said a voice he hadn't heard in long enough that he was still trying to place it when she went on, "It's Misty. Is Danny with you? I called him first, but he's not answering."

"He's probably got his phone turned off." Because of course Danny would be polite like that. "We're in a library. Thank you for rescuing me." Though now he was getting dirty looks from nearby monks. "Please tell me it's an emergency and we have to leave." 

"It's an emergency, and you have to leave."

"Thank you. That was very convincing."

"That's because it's true," Misty said, and at that point he registered the ragged edge to her voice, along with remembering that it was the middle of the night in New York right now. "Can you get Danny, please?"

"Uh -- yeah, yeah." He waved at Danny, who waved back in an impatient "just a minute" gesture. Ward semaphored "Now!" as urgently as possible, pointing at the phone. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be -- well. Me. You know what I'm like. What's going on?"

"Ward, I'm going to tell you this, and then I'm going to tell Danny, but I'm telling you first so _he_ doesn't have to tell you. Okay?"

"Okay," Ward said, not really sure what else to say. Danny, from the look of things, had lost himself in his moldering old scroll again. Ward waved at him with emphatic finger-stabs at the phone until Danny rolled his eyes and got up.

"There was a warehouse fire and explosion tonight, having to do with a gang of drug smugglers Colleen and I have been trying to bring down. Ward, she didn't get out." And suddenly the ragged hoarseness in Misty's voice had more clarity: it was more than exhaustion, it was the roughness of unshed tears. "The rubble is too hot to search, and they're still looking ... but, Ward, it doesn't look good."

"Oh," was all he could say, thinking, _Colleen?_ It simply didn't seem real. Just yesterday she and Danny had been Facetiming and making disgustingly cute noises at each other while Ward tried to ignore them.

Danny. Hell.

Misty was saying something else, but Danny arrived just then, looking bright-eyed and hopeful. "Colleen?" he whispered, pointing at the phone, and Ward shook his head, stomach sinking. He felt like he had to warn Danny somehow, but he didn't know what to _say._ There just weren't words for this. He was selfishly glad that Misty was going to explain it and he didn't have to.

"Hang on, Misty. He's here." He took Danny's elbow and steered him toward the door as he handed over the phone. They were going to want to be outside for this. Anyway, the monks' dirty looks had escalated to the point where they were probably going to be thrown out of the library anytime now, anyway.

Danny shot him an annoyed look. "Misty, hey. What's up? Ward is --" 

He broke off, and as they stepped out into the golden afternoon sunshine, Ward got to watch the play of expressions on his face as Danny's entire world fell apart.

"Oh," Danny said at last, in a very tiny voice. Ward steered him to sit on a flagged stone step. Danny went along without resisting, pliable and half-limp. The tinny buzz of Misty's voice was still audible as she kept talking. Danny didn't react, except for an occasional, faint listening sound. At last he said, "Uh-huh. Thanks, uh ... you too. You too. Here he is." And to Ward: "She wants to talk to you again."

He handed the phone back and then buried his face in his hands, there on the temple steps. 

Ward took the phone because the alternative was dropping it down the steps, but Misty could talk herself blue in the goddamn face for all he cared right now. He kept his hand on Danny's shoulder, rubbing a little, wishing he was better at this. "Hey, you okay?" 

... so yeah, how was that for the stupidest possible thing he could have said under the circumstances. Danny wasn't okay. Danny might not ever be okay again. He didn't say anything, and Ward finally remembered the phone.

"-- Ward? Hey! Did we get cut off?" Misty was saying when he put it to his ear.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here, _what?"_ He could feel Danny shivering under his hand, and squeezed lightly. 

Misty made a sound, a sort of huffed, annoyed almost-laugh, and it suddenly hit him that she'd just lost a close friend too, and probably he should say something about that. He'd signed condolence cards for employees; he shouldn't be too terrible at this. And he _liked_ Misty, he really did. "Hey, ah -- I'm sorry," he said. "About Colleen." Danny shivered harder and Ward regretted his choice of words. Again. More sympathy-words surfaced out of his brain. "How are you doing?"

"Okay, I guess." She laughed, half hysterically, and Ward half-laughed too, because what else was he going to do? He felt like he should be feeling more; he didn't even know _how_ he felt about Colleen, except that she was ride-or-die for Danny and he respected that, and she didn't like him much for what were, he felt, entirely valid reasons. Knowing she might be dead was just ... _strange_ ; it was an absence, not a thing.

He wasn't even really sure how the rest of the conversation went, afterwards; just that there were platitudes on both sides, and then he was getting Danny up off the step. "Come on," Ward said, and Danny gripped his sleeve and didn't say anything at all.

 

***

 

Danny didn't weep, which was more worrying by far than if he'd grieved with even a shadow of his usual exuberance. Instead, he was white-faced and silent: silent in the taxi, silent in the small, hot airport waiting area while they waited for a commercial flight to Mumbai, where they would meet the Rand jet. Ward brought him a styrofoam cup of tea, and Danny took it and just held it, looking at nothing.

Their flight was delayed, and delayed again, and they finally took off in turbulence that would normally have had Danny clutching at his seat while Ward tried to distract him. This time, he didn't even react, just stared out the window at the low line of purple thunderheads on the horizon. And it occurred to Ward that he was in way, way, _way_ over his head here.

Colleen was dead. He still couldn't quite grasp it. Couldn't believe that she wouldn't be waiting for them when they touched down in New York.

"Hey." He nudged Danny's arm, until he finally got Danny to look at him. "You hungry? Want to get something to eat when we land?"

There was a long pause, as if words were having to reach Danny from a long ways away right now, and then, slowly, he shook his head.

"Okay," Ward said, not really sure what else there was to say. 

"Hey ... Ward," Danny said, and finally looked over at him. Something seemed to have changed in his face; it was still pale, but there was an intensity of purpose, a glittering sharpness to his eyes. "If -- if Misty hasn't found the -- If the people who did this are still out there -- will you help me find them?"

"Yes," Ward said simply, thinking of Joy and Davos and the simplicity of the gun in his hands.

Danny nodded, and turned to look back out the window again.

Ward left his hand on Danny's arm for the rest of the flight, for whatever good it seemed to do.

 

***

 

The Rand jet was waiting for them on the runway in Mumbai. The jet had a small kitchenette on board, but Ward took the time to grab takeout from the airport anyway. They were going to be in the air for fifteen hours and the last time they'd eaten had been -- lunch, maybe? He was hungry, even if Danny wasn't. 

Once they were underway, Danny refused the food Ward tried to get him to eat. He just shook his head and went and sat by himself a little way back in the plane, with his sock feet tucked up on the seat and his arms wrapped around his knees.

He looked like an overgrown kid, sitting like that. And, Ward thought, maybe that was exactly what he was right now. A kid who'd lost both his parents and everything he'd ever known, who had grown up and gotten past it and then had just lost the person he loved most in the world and was thrown right back into that headspace again.

Except, Ward reminded himself, Danny _wasn't_ a kid. He was an adult who was fully capable of going on a murder rampage if he slipped the chains on the calmer and more restrained part of himself that kept his violent tendencies in check. Danny was a really sweet guy, he was nicer than Ward would ever be, and he was also the guy who had almost driven himself and Ward off the roof of a parking garage, once upon a time.

Ward put away the food, which he'd mostly lost his appetite for anyway. Instead, he made a cup of tea in the galley, and then took it up the aisle and sat down across from Danny.

"I don't --" Danny began quietly, when Ward tried to put the cup into his hands.

"... want it, I know, but listen. Misty said they're still looking, right? It might not be, I mean, maybe she's --"

"Don't," Danny said, almost angrily.

Ward shut up. There was something _really not right_ about the most hopeful and optimistic person that he knew losing hope. Then he said, cautiously, "Well, look, I'm just saying, if she's not, and she finds out I didn't take good care of you, she's going to kick my ass up one side of the dojo and down the other."

This didn't get so much as a hint of a smile. Instead Danny said, "Ward ..." in a voice that sounded small and utterly lost.

"Yeah. I'm here." Ward took the cup out of Danny's hands before it fell and started to set it on the floor. He wasn't prepared for Danny all but falling out of the seat onto him. He managed to put the cup on the floor and got his arms around Danny and just sat there and held him.

He didn't know what to do. He wasn't good at this. _It's going to be okay_ was the easy lie, but he remembered how angry he'd gotten at people who said things like that when he was a kid.

"I'm here," he said into Danny's hair, and it wasn't enough, not at all; but it was ... something, anyway.

 

***

 

As the flight wore on, they chased the sun: a late golden afternoon that never ended. Back in Mumbai, night would have fallen by now. Here, the sun painted the inside of the plane in gold and copper as Ward got Danny to lie down on one of the couch-style seats in the back and covered him with a blanket.

"You know, Colleen doesn't really have any family. None that are still alive," Danny said. 

Ward looked up from using the onboard wifi to halfheartedly poke at Rand status reports, trying to unwind enough to sleep himself. He was going to be back in New York soon, with board meetings and investors and everything he'd left behind. It didn't feel any more real than the rest of this.

"It's just me," Danny went on. He sat up, tugging on the blanket to wrap it loosely around himself. "Me, and her friends in New York, of course. There'll be lots of people at her f --" His voice broke. He stopped. "Lots of people," he went on shakily. "Everyone at the center loves her. But, I mean ... the arrangements ... Her mom was from Japan and her dad was from China, and some of her family was a little bit Buddhist but mostly they weren't really much of anything at all. I don't know what she'd want --"

"Danny." Ward managed to break in, finally. "You don't have to do all of that alone."

"I know," Danny said in a small voice, hugging the blanket around himself.

"You _don't._ Look, if there's one thing I've learned about you on this trip, it's that you have a truly absurd number of friends back in New York. You're texting someone ten times a day, they email you all the time -- I can't believe the number of people whose names I now know just because of taking calls for _you."_

"It's not _that_ many people."

"Okay, whatever, but the point is, however many people it is, they're all going to help you, okay? And I'm going to help you, and Misty's going to help you. You're not alone, Danny."

Danny buried his face in his hands, and Ward had a brief moment of _Oh fuck_ because he hadn't been trying to make Danny cry, it was more like the opposite of that, and _why was he so bad at this?_ Then Danny took a shuddering breath and wiped at his eyes and said quietly, "Did you say there's food?"

Ward microwaved the leftovers, and Danny sat crosslegged on the couch while Ward sat across from him and got him to eat a pretty decent amount. _You'd appreciate this, Colleen,_ he thought while chasing some kind of curry around his plastic takeout container with a slightly rubbery piece of naan. _I've got him eating, and he's not doing so bad, all things considered. So far._

Great, now he was having mental conversations with dead people. Not like it was the first time, even. At least Colleen was a nicer person to have taking up headspace than Harold.

"Think you could sleep?" he asked when Danny finally pushed the takeout container away. "Or meditate, or something like that?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I want to. Every time I close my eyes ..." Danny took a quick breath and blinked a lot.

"Okay, no sleeping yet, got it. You know, there's streaming in-flight entertainment on this plane."

They settled on a comedy show (that Ward looked up sneakily on his phone to make sure there were no dead girlfriends in it). Danny's phone vibrated with an incoming text while Ward was still setting up the show, and Danny looked at it and then shuddered and shoved his phone at Ward. "Can you ... take that? I don't want -- I mean, I just ... can't deal, right now."

Ward glanced down and saw the text was from Luke, one of the people whose name was familiar to him entirely from listening to Danny talk about his circle of New York friends. It just said, _Hang in there, man. Call if you want to talk._

"Want me to text back?"

"Yeah ... no ... I don't know." Danny looked miserable. Ward texted a quick "Thanks" and Danny gave him a wan smile. 

Ward turned off both their phones and cued up the show.

By the time they lost wifi somewhere over the Atlantic, Danny had fallen asleep in a blanket-covered heap. Ward grabbed a pillow and flopped down on one of the other couches. It was starting to look like late evening out the windows now, the sky over the water purpling into darkness. If he'd calculated it right, they were going to get into New York sometime around midnight local time. Probably just as well they hadn't slept much on the plane; he already knew how hard this many time zones were going to screw both their internal clocks. It was probably the best thing for Danny if he was able to sleep a little bit when he got there. And then ...

Ward had a general idea of what came next because of dealing with both his parents' deaths, and the Rands' deaths in between.

He rolled onto his back and threw his arm over his eyes. He really wanted to sleep. It was what, four or five in the morning according to his internal clock? His eyes felt like they were full of sand. He wanted a little oblivion, damn it.

He didn't want to think about the Rands' joint funeral, and especially not the framed photo of little curly-headed Danny between both parents' photos, surrounded by heaps of flowers. He and Joy had sat stiff-backed in their kid-sized black funeral suits, Joy sniffling quietly through the whole thing while Ward held her hand. Joy had never known a person who had died before, at least no one close to her; she wasn't old enough to remember Mom.

Ward didn't remember if he'd cried at Danny's funeral. He was pretty sure not. He hadn't cried at Dad's either, but that was for a whole different reason.

He wondered if he could throw Katie on the funeral arrangements for Colleen. It seemed like the kind of thing she'd be good at, but he didn't know if it was fair to ask his office PA to deal with the arrangements for a friend-of-a-friend's funeral, even if he paid her overtime. Which was an interesting thought to have. Six months ago, he would have thrown that job over to her without even thinking about it, just considered it part of what he'd hired her to do.

Now he had to think about whether it was fair even to ask her. This entire being-a-better-person thing was such a ripoff, he thought bleakly. 

Danny made a soft, distressed sound and shivered in his sleep. Ward sighed and sat up. He slid off his couch and knelt beside Danny's so he could lay a hand on Danny's arm. He did it as lightly as possible; he didn't want to wake Danny up, because even though it didn't seem like Danny was having a great time being asleep, at least he _was_ asleep and not thinking about stuff.

"Hey," Ward murmured. "It's gonna be okay. _You're_ gonna be okay. I know it doesn't seem like it. But you're tough, kid. You'll get through this just like you made it through all that other shit you never should have had to deal with."

Most of which had been caused, directly or indirectly, by his family, and some of which had been directly caused by Ward, personally. But this wasn't the time for guilt, deserved or otherwise. He knew he wasn't good at nailing the balance between what he knew he ought to do, and what he was actually capable of, but he understood this much, at least. Leave the guilt for some other time.

And Danny had relaxed a little, so Ward squeezed his arm lightly and stayed there, leaning on the edge of the couch. He'd lost sleep for worse reasons.

 

***

 

They landed in New York under low cloud cover. Danny had been up for a little while, looking so haggard it was hard to believe he'd slept at all. Ward had caught an hour or so of sleep toward the end, but he was still in a haze of sleep-deprivation-induced unreality, dazed and exhausted as he opened the plane's rear door onto the cool, damp night air of New York City.

He'd texted from Mumbai to let Misty know their approximate arrival time, and there were a couple of cars and a little cluster of people waiting for them by the runway. Great, Ward thought, a welcoming committee. This was exactly what they needed, all right.

But then Danny made a strange, startled sound and pushed past him. Ward had no idea what Danny thought he was doing or what was happening, not until Danny flung his arms around one of the people in the group and picked them up off the ground, and there was a swinging ponytail and Ward's sleep-deprived brain caught up enough to go, oh wait, isn't that _Colleen --_

"Do either of you _ever_ check your phones?" Misty demanded as soon as he was close enough, half laughing and half exasperated. Danny and Colleen were still tangled up in each other. Things had progressed by now to frantic kisses; at this rate they were going to be needing a room shortly. "I realize you were on an international flight, Meachum, but you can't tell me a private jet doesn't have telecom."

"Oh ... what? Oh ..." This would all be much easier if he weren't jetlagged and still half asleep, because that was the point when he remembered that both their phones were in his pocket, and both were off. He fumbled out his phone and booted it up to discover twelve missed text messages, mostly from Misty, two from Colleen. "Oh," he said again, and scowled at her. "Don't judge me. It's been a day."

"Yeah, it's been a regular picnic around here for sure," Misty said with a snort, and while he was scrambling around to try to figure out how to backtrack from _that,_ she put her arms around him and hugged him. "Welcome back to New York."

"Uh, yeah, hi." He hugged her back awkwardly. She was incredibly strong, even taking into account the metal arm, and although she must have showered and changed in the past most-of-a-day, she still smelled faintly of smoke.

And as soon as he untangled from _that_ , then unexpectedly Colleen was hugging him, or at least putting an arm around him in a quick half-hug; her other arm was taken up with Danny. "Hi, Ward," she said. She had a large bandage taped above one eye and bruises down the side of her face.

"Hi yourself," he said, and surprised himself (and clearly her) by hugging her hard enough to lift her halfway off her feet. Then he let her reattach herself to Danny. "Nice to see you. You're looking unexpectedly ... good --"

"I should save you from yourself before any more words escape your mouth, Ward," Misty said. "You've met Claire, right?"

So there were introductions all around, and while he _had_ met Claire (very briefly, while suffering from a Harold-induced concussion), he finally got to put faces to some of the names that he'd previously known only through long-distance texts in Asia. At least the hugs seemed to have stopped with Misty and Colleen, but he had his hand shaken and his back slapped (by Luke ... ow), and in general they were being weirdly friendly to him, in a way that people never really _were_ friendly to him, because he knew Danny.

He had meant his reassurances to Danny on the jet; those words hadn't been empty platitudes. But he wasn't sure if he'd realized just how true it was. On some level he had never stopped thinking of Danny as that isolated homeless guy who'd first turned up at Rand two years ago. But Danny _wasn't_ that person anymore. He had built a circle of people around him, and now those people were here to support Danny and welcome him back to New York.

There was a time in his life when Ward would have been jealous. There was a part of him that still was. But he had a firm grip on it this time, and anyway, the fact that they were welcoming him, too, helped ease the sting.

_I'm glad you have this, Danny. You earned it._

"Hey, Ward!" Danny still had an arm around Colleen -- they hadn't taken their hands off each other -- but he grabbed at Ward's sleeve and tugged him toward one of the cars. The change in him was astonishing; he was almost incandescent, joy and delight lighting him up from within. "So I guess we're going to have a, a kind of a party? Like sort of a combined welcome-back-Danny and Colleen's-okay kind of party. At the dojo? C'mon."

"I was going to go home and sleep." 

"Oh no you don't," said the dark-haired woman he'd never met before tonight, whose name, he was pretty sure, was Jessica. "If I have to suffer through something like this, I'm not suffering alone."

Well, hell. He was too wired to sleep anyway, and the idea of being all alone in a big empty apartment after months of sharing hotel rooms with Danny was not actually that appealing. Danny looked hopeful, and Colleen, curled into Danny like they were two pieces of a puzzle that had clicked back together, was even smiling at him. "Okay, sure," he said, and that made Danny beam and hug him for some reason, and it occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, this felt a little bit like home.


End file.
